Don't believe the News Corp bots, Pauline Hanson's One Nation failed dismally inSouth Australia and will continue to fail in every subsequent election. FounderDavid Donovansorts the facts from the fakery.

AsIndependent Australiareported on Monday (23/3/26), Pauline Hansons One Nation party failed dismally in the South Australian election on Saturday.

So dismally, in fact, election watchers were treated to the ignoble spectacle of Pauline Hansonbelligerently talkingabout setting landmines for returning Premier Peter Malinauskas, whose Labor Government was re-elected in a landslide, winning 33 of 47 seats at the time of writing (likely 34, up from27 in 2022).

This peculiarlygraceless leader lapped up the ignorant jubilation of her supporters, seemingly oblivious to the fact her party had failed to secure even a single lower or upper house seat at that time (now one, likely to end up with three).

This result was especially dismal, since PHON had every advantage in the lead up to this election, including the mainstream media promoting it enthusiastically at every available opportunity, constantly overstating its poll results to increase the party's threadbare credibility.

More disturbingly, asIndependent Australiahas reported in two stunning exposs, Hansons Trumpian cheer-squadat FacebookandNews Corpfraudulently and misleadingly misrepresented PHONs poll results and even actively created fake news stories using AI to putPauline Hanson and her party in a more favourable light.

As artificial intelligence fuels viral political fiction, Australias democratic debate risks being steered by outrage rather than truth.

This groundbreaking investigation was subsequentlypicked up by the ABC, although without crediting IA for the scoop (but what else is new?)

The fix was in. But even the fix was too much for Murdoch, Seven, Nine and Meta to cobble together any electoral success worth mentioning in South Australia.

There's a lot to be said aboutthis, which cannot all be covered on these pages, as no one knows more about Pauline Hanson and her disreputable minions than the people who wrote a book about her colourful, convicted criminal chief of staff,James Ashby, in 2015:Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australias Speaker. Since then,IAs investigations editorRoss Joneshas been painstakingly documenting every dodgy deed and unsavoury development.

The tawdry workings of the Hanson operation are impossible to easily encapsulate in one short article here, so we advise you to peruse our dedicatedAshbygate pageandbuy the bookto be more apprised of the background to this latest episode.

This article is about why PHON,or One Nation, was never a realistic challenger in South Australia, and why it will almost certainly never seriously threaten to gain power in any territory or state and most certainly not federally.

WHY PAULINE HANSONS ONE NATION WILL NEVER GAIN POWER IN AUSTRALIA

Dont believe the hype! There are two intersecting reasons why One Nation will never form Government in Australia and will probably never even manage to gain enough seats to be the official Opposition. One of them is mathematical and the other sociological, but they go hand-in-hand.

To gain power in a territory, state or nationally, a party or political grouping needs to win the majority of seats in that legislatures lower house. The upper house, where there is one, is irrelevant to sitting on the treasury benches. Government sits on the so-called treasury benches because to form government, a political party or parties need to be able to guarantee supply: that is, pass its budget and any other appropriation acts necessary to finance its agenda, legislative and otherwise.

The South Australian State Election showed why Pauline Hansons party is unlikely to ever get close to gaining a majority of seats in the lower house of any Australian parliament. Because even with the backing of Gina Rinehart and her millions, along with numerous other billionaire backers;and even with the full-throated support of the mainstream media, led by Rupert Murdochs News Corp, but also Seven and Nine, supported byfake AI interviews on Facebook, it still only managed a mere 22% offirst preference votes in the SA Lower House.

This resulted in One Nation achieving just a single seat in the Lower House admittedly, their best ever result in that state.

In fact, even at the high-water mark in its history, when Hanson burst on the scene in 1998, it was only ever able to accrue 23% of the vote in Queensland, and win just 11 seats out of a total of 89 in Queenslands unicameral (no upper house) Parliament. It lost all but fourof those seats in the subsequent election in 2002, with its primary vote plummeting by 11%.

The reason why One Nation is unlikely to ever achieve much more than one-fifth of first preference votes and thereby not garner more than a handful of seats in the lower house of any Australian Parliament is due to our nations almost unique compulsory (for both houses) two-party preferred (for the lower house) voting system.

Compulsory, because voting is mandatory, and two-party preferred because, unless there is a clear majority for a candidate in primary votes, it usually comes down to which two candidates have received the most preferences.

In South Australia, even though the abysmal Liberal Party achieved fewer primary votes statewide on Saturday (19%), it still picked up four seats (at time of writing)to One Nations one. The reason for this is that the vast majority of voters preferenced One Nation below the Liberal Party.

Pauline Hanson and One Nation may be passionately supported by their zealous supporters, but everyone else seems to either dislike them or see them as a risk. That means that for One Nation to even get into second position, it needs togain at least 35% of the primary voteand probably closer to 40%. This, it failed to do in all but a solitary seat so farand will end up with no more than three.

The mandatory nature of our voting system as opposed to the feature of the UK and U.S. systems ofgetting people motivated to turn out is also important here. Because it is very possible, with low voter turnout, with a highly vocal and motivated minority, such as One Nation appears to have, it might be enough to get it over the line in a first-past-the-post system even with just 22% of the total voting population.

Which is that, with compulsory preferential voting, the silent majority of voters restores decency and order in our system. Because the majority of the Australian public,IAcontends, deplores the prejudice and bigotry of Pauline Hanson and her loudmouthed, prejudiced supporters.

As Darren Crawfordwrote on Monday:

These "deplorables", as Hillary Clinton described Trumps supporters and Hanson is one of Australias biggest MAGA supporters, and a recent guest at Mar-a-Lago are not popular with most Australians. And no number of bots, or millions from Gina Rinehart-style billionaires, or boosting from Rupert Murdoch and Facebook, is ever likely to make it so.

Meta and News Corp spread fake news to promote Pauline Hanson and provide an overblown impression of her party's polling. FounderDavid Donovanexposes a dangerous deception.

Moreover, Australians are not stupid, mostly. Whywould they risk Pauline Hanson, a stammering, stammering incompetent, with a party made up of clowns, misfits andcriminals, which is utterly bereft of any coherent policies or governing credentials, with the precious levers of power? We have all seen what happened with Trump and Hanson is not even half as intelligent as that alleged paedophile grifter.

Australians decent Australians, the majority will never allow this laughable party of protest, offenceand indignation to ever attain any more than a sizable, obnoxious minority of lower house seats. Not enough,IAsuggests, to even grant them a trial run on the opposition benches of any Australian parliament across our great brown land.

Thank goodness Australia has a system of democracy, which, although far from perfect, does not easily enable third-rate zealots like Hanson to hoodwink enough of a disaffected minority to this country into another dystopian Trumpian Far-Right hellscape.

DavidDonovanis the founder of Independent Australiaand former vice chair of the Australian Republican Movement.Follow Dave on X/Twitter@davroszand [email protected].

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